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BIRDALONE SERIES 
OF ESSAYS 

HEROISM BY 

Ralph Waldo Emerson 



a 



HEROlSlvI 
FEELS AND 
NEVERREA^ 
SONS. AND i 
M THEREFORE 
IS ALWAYS 



RIGHT 



BMERSCO^ 



HEROISM 

?i BY 

RALPH WALDO 
EMERSON 




iQOb 
MORGAN SHEPARD CO- c. 

NEW YORK &» SAlsT FRANCISCO 




l?-X-vc^; 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Twe Copies Received 

DEC 13 1906 

A Copyright Entry , 

CLASS A XXC, No. 

COPY B. 






DECORATIONS COPYRIGHTED 

BY 

MORGAN SHEPARD CO. 

MCMVI 



i 



HEROISM 



HEROISM 

" Paradise is under the shadow of swords." 

Mahomet, 

N the elder English 
dramatists, and 
mainly in the plays 
of Beaumont and 
Fletcher, there is a 
constant recognition 
of gentility, as if a 
noble behavior 
were as easily marked in the society 
of their age, as color is in our 
American population. When any 
Rodrigo, Pedro, or Valerio enters, 
though he be a stranger, the duke or 
governor exclaims : This is a gentleman, 
—and proffers civilities without end; 
but all the rest are slag and refuse. 
In harmony with this delight in 
personal advantages, there is in their 




Martius plays a certain heroic cast of character 
and dialogue, — as in Bonduca, Sopho- 
cles, the Mad Lover, the Double 
Marriage, — wherein the speaker is so 
earnest and cordial, and on such deep 
grounds of character, that the dialogue, 
on the slightest additional incident in 
the plot, rises naturally into poetry. 
Among many texts, take the following: 
The Roman Martius has conquered 
Athens, — all but the invincible spirits 
of Sophocles the duke of Athens, and 
Dorigen his wife. The beauty of the 
latter inflames Martius, and he seeks 
to save her husband; but Sophocles 
will not ask his life, although assured 
that a word will save him, and the 
execution of both proceeds. 

*^ Valerius. Bid thy wife farewell. 
Soph. No, I will take no leave. My Dorigen, 
Yonder above, 'bout Ariadne's crown, 
My spirit shall hover for thee. Prithee, haste. 
Dor. Stay, Sophocles — with this tie up my 
sight; 
Let not soft nature so transformed be, 



And lose her gentler-sex humanity, Sophocles 

To make me see my lord bleed. So, 'tis well ; 
Never one object underneath the sun 
"Will I behold before my Sophocles. 
Farewell ; now teach the Romans how to die. 

Mar, Dost know what 'tis to die ? 

Soph. Thou dost not, Martius, 
And therefore not what 'tis to live. To^ie 
Xs to begin to live ; it is to end ^ 

An old^tale, wfeary work, and to commence 
A newer and a better ; 'tis to leave 
Deceitful knaves for the society 
Of gods and goodness. Thou thyself must 

part 
At last from all thy garlands, pleasures, 

triumphs, 
And prove thy fortitude what then 'twill do. 

VaL But art not grieved nor vexed to leave 

thy life thus ? 
Soph, 'Why should I grieve or vex for 
being sent 
To them I ever loved best ? Now I'll kneel, 
But with my back toward thee; 'tis the 

last duty 
This trunk can do the gods. 

Mar. Strike, strike, Valerius, 
Or Martius' heart will leap out at his mouth: 
This is a man, a woman ! Kiss thy lord. 



Text And live with all the freedom you were wont. 
O love ! thou doubly hast afflicted me 
With virtue and with beauty. Treacherous 

heart, 
My hand shall cast thee quick into my urn, 
Ere thou transgress this knot of piety. 

VaL What ails my brother ? 

Soph, Martins, O Martins, 
Thou now hast found a way to conquer me. 

Dor. O star of Rome ! what gratitude can 
speak 
Fit words to follow such a deed as this ? 

Mar. This admirable duke, Valerius, 
With his disdain of fortune and of death, 
Captived himself, has captivated me, 
And though my arm hath ta'en his body here, 
His soul hath subjugated Martius' soul. 
By Romulus, he is all soul, I think ; 
He hath no flesh, and spirit cannot be gyved. 
Then we have vanquished nothing ; he is free, 
And Martins walks now in captivity." 

I do not readily remember any poem, 
play, sermon, novel, or oration that 
our press vents in the last few years, 
which goes to the same tune. We 
have a great many jflutes and flageolets, 
but not often the sound of any fife. 



Yet Wordsworth's Laodamia, and the Soni 

lode of '*Dion," and some sonnets, have 

la certain noble music; and Scott will 

sometimes draw a stroke like the 

[portrait of Lord Evandale, given by 

I Balfour of Burley. Thomas Carlyle, 

with his natural taste for what is manly 

and daring in character, has suffered 

3 no heroic trait in his favorites to drop 

from his biographical and historical 

I pictures. Earlier, Robert Burns has 

given us a song or two. In the Harleian 

Miscellanies there is an account of the 

battle of Lutzen, which deserves to be 

read. And Simon Ockley's History 

of the Saracens recounts the prodigies 

of individual valor with admiration, all 

[the more evident on the part of the 

I narrator, that he seems to think that 

his place in Christian Oxford requires 

I of him some proper protestations of 

abhorrence. But if we explore the 

literature of Heroism, we shall quickly 

come to Plutarch, who is its doctor 



t^ 



Virtue 



and historian. To him we owe the 
Brasidas, the Dion, the EpaminondaSi 
the Scipio of old ; and I must think 
we are more deeply indebted to him 
than to all the ancient writers. Each 
of his ** Lives" is a refutation to the 
despondency and cowardice of our 
religious and political theorists. A 
wild courage, a stoicism not of the 
schools, but of the blood, shines in 
every anecdote, and has given that 
book its immense fame. 

We need books of this tart cathartic 
virtue, more than books of political 
science or of private economy. Life 
is a festival only to the wise. Seen 
from the nook and chimney-side of 
prudence, it wears a ragged and 
dangerous front. The violations of the 
laws of nature by our predecessors 
and our contemporaries are punished 
in us also. The disease and deform- 
ity around us certify the infraction of 
natural, intellectual, and moral laws, 



and often violation on violation to Dread 
(breed such compound misery. A lock- Naught 
jaw, that bends a man's head back to 
his heels ; hydrophobia, that makes him 
bark at his wife and babes ; insanity, 
ihat makes him eat grass ; war, plague, 
cholera, famine, — indicate a certain 
ferocity in nature, which, as it had its 
iinlet by human crime, must have its 
outlet by human suffering. Unhappily, 
almost no man exists who has not in 
ihis own person become, to some 
amount, a stockholder in the sin, and 
so made himself liable to a share in 
the expiation. 

Our culture, therefore, must not omit 
I the arming of the man. Let him hear 
lin season, that he is born into the state 
of war, and that the commonwealth 
and his own well-being require that 
he should not go dancing in the weeds 
of peace ; but warned, self-collected, 
and neither defying nor dreading the 
thunder, let him take both reputation 



I 

Prudence and llfc ill hls hand, and with perfect 
urbanity dare the gibbet and the mob 
by the absolute truth of his speech and k 
the rectitude of his behavior. m 

Towards all this external evil the jtl 
man within the breast assumes a war- ill 
like attitude, and affirms his ability to 
cope single-handed with the infinite 
army of enemies. To this military 
attitude of the soul we give the name 
of Heroism. Its rudest form is the 
contempt for safety and ease, which 
makes the attractiveness of war. It 
is a self -trust which slights the restraints ||y 
of prudence, in the plenitude of its 
energy and power to repair the harms 
it may suffer. The hero is a mind of 
such balance that no disturbances can 
shake his will ; but pleasantly, and as 
it were merrily, he advances to his 
own music, alike in frightful alarms 
and in the tipsy mirth of universal 
dissoluteness. There is somewhat 
not philosophical in heroism ; there is 



jsomewhat not holy in it; it seems not Heroism 
to know that other souls are of one f^^^^ 
itexture with it; it hath pride; it is the 
extreme of individual nature. Never- 
theless we must profoundly revere it. 
There is somewhat in great actions, 
'which does not allow us to go behind 
them. Heroism feels and never 

reasons, and therefore is always right ; 
land although a different breeding, 
different religion, and greater intellec- 
itual activity would have modified or 
ieven reversed the particular action, 
yet for the hero, that thing he does is 
the highest deed, and is not open to 
'the censure of philosophers or divines, 
'[t is the avowal of the unschooled 
man, that he finds a quality in him 
at is negligent of expense, of health, 
of life, of danger, of hatred, of reproach^ 
nd that he knows that his will is 
igher and more excellent than all 
ctual and all possible antagonists. 
Heroism works in contradiction to the 



Secret yoice of mankind, and in contradiction, 
Impulse £^j. ^ time, to the voice of the great and 
good. Heroism is an obedience to a 
secret impulse of an individual's 
character. Now to no other man can 
its wisdom appear as it does to him, 
for every man must be supposed to see 
a little farther on his own proper path 
than any one else. Therefore, just 
and wise men take umbrage at his act, 
until after some little time be past; 
then they see it to be in unison with 
their acts. All prudent men see that 
the action is clean contrary to a sensual 
prosperity; for every heroic act 
measures itself by its contempt of 
some external good. But it finds its 
own success at last, and then the' 
prudent also extol. 

Self- trust is the essence of Heroism. 
It is the state of the soul at war ; and 
its ultimate objects are the last defiance 
of falsehood and wrong, and the 
power to bear all that can be inflicted 

10 



1 



[by evil agents. It speaks the truth, f^^^se 
I and it is just. It is generous, hospitable, ^^^^^nce 
I temperate, scornful of petty calcu- 
i lations, and scornful of being scorned, 
fit persists; it is of an undaunted 
boldness, and of a fortitude not to be 
^ wearied out. Its jest is the littleness 
of common life. That false prudence 
f which dotes on health and wealth is 
the foil, the butt and merriment of 
heroism. Heroism, like Plotinus, is 
almost ashamed of its body. What 
, shall it say, then, to the sugar-plums 
and cats' -cradles, to the toilet, compli- 
ments, quarrels, cards, and custard 
which rack the wit of all human society? 
What joys has kind nature provided 
for us dear creatures! There seems 
to be no interval between greatness 
and meanness. When the spirit is not 
master of the world, then is it its dupe. 
Yet the little man takes the great 
hoax so innocently, works in it so 
headlong and believing, is born red, 

11 



Stockings and dies gray, arranging his toilet, 
attending on his own health, laying 
traps for sweet food and strong wine, 
setting his heart on a horse or a rifle, 
made happy with a little gossip or a 
little praise, that the great soul cannot 
choose but laugh at such earnest 
nonsense. *^ Indeed, these humble 

considerations make me out of love 
with greatness. What a disgrace is it 
to me to take note how many pairs of j 
silk stockings thou hast, namely, these 
and those that were the peach-colored 
ones; or to bear the inventory of thy 
shirts, as one for superfluity, and one 
other for use ! ' ' 

Citizens, thinking after the law of 
arithmetic, consider the inconvenience 
of receiving strangers at their fireside, 
reckon narrowly the loss of time and 
the unusual display : the soul of a 
better quality thrusts back the 
unseasonable economy into the vaults 
of life, and says, I will obey the God, 

12 



'and the sacrifice and the fire he will Strangers 
1 provide. Ibn Haukal, the Arabian 
geographer, describes a heroic extreme 
\ in the hospitality of Sogd, in Bukharia. 
• "When I was in Sogd I saw a great 
i building, like a palace, the gates of 
j which were open and fixed back to the 
wall with large nails. I asked the 
; reason, and was told that the house 
'had not been shut night or day for a 
i hundred years. Strangers may present 
[themselves at any hour, and in what- 
ever number; the master has amply 
[provided for the reception of the men 
. and their animals, and is never happier 
^than when they tarry for some time. 
I Nothing of the kind have I seen in 
any other country." The magnanimous 
Iknow very well, that they who give 
time, or money, or shelter to the 
[stranger, — so it be done for love, and 
I not for ostentation, — do as it were put 
[God under obligation to them, so 
I perfect are the compensations of the 

13 



Temperance univcrsc. Ill some Way the time they 
seem to lose is redeemed, and the 
pains they seem to take remunerate 
themselves. These men fan the 

flame of human love, and raise the 
standard of civil virtue among mankind. 
But hospitality must be for service, 
and not for show, or it pulls down the 
host. The brave soul rates itself too 
high to value itself by the splendor of 
its table and draperies. It gives what 
it hath, and all it hath; but its own 
majesty can lend a better grace to 
bannocks and fair water than belong 
to city feasts. 

The temperance of the hero proceeds 
from the same wish to do no dishonor 
to the worthiness he has. But he 
loves it for its elegancy, not for its 
austerity. It seems not worth his 
while to be solemn, and denounce with 
bitterness flesh-eating or wine-drinking, 
the use of tobacco, or opium, or tea, or 
silk, or gold. A great man scarcely 

14 



I knows how he dines, how he dresses; Brutus 
• but, without railing or precision, his 
i living is natural and poetic. John 
Eliot, the Indian Apostle, drank water, 
and said of wine, "It is a noble, 
generous liquor, and we should be 
humbly thankful for it ; but, as I 
remember, water was made before it/' 
Better still is the temperance of king 
David, who poured out on the ground 
unto the Lord the water which three 
of his warriors had brought him to 
drink at the peril of their lives. 

It is told of Brutus, that when he 
fell on his sword, after the battle of 
Philippi, he quoted a line of Euripides, 
"O virtue, I have followed thee through 
life, and I find thee at last but a shade.'* 
I doubt not the hero is slandered by 
this report. The heroic soul does not 
sell its justice and its nobleness. It 
does not ask to dine nicely and to sleep 
warm. The essence of greatness is 
the perception that virtue is enough. 

15 



Heroic Poverty is its ornament. Plenty it 
Class does not need, and can very well abide 
its loss. 

But that which takes my fancy most, 
in the heroic class, is the good humor 
and hilarity they exhibit. It is a 
height to which common duty can very 
well attain, to suffer and to dare with 
solemnity. But these rare souls set 
opinion, success, and life at so cheap 
a rate, that they will not soothe their 
enemies by petitions, or the show of 
sorrow, but wear their own habitual 
greatness. Scipio, charged with 

peculation, refuses to do himself so 
great a disgrace as to wait for justifi- 
cation, though he had the scroll of his 
accounts in his hands, but tears it to 
pieces before the tribunes. Socrates' 
condemnation of himself to be main- 
tained in all honor in the Prytaneum 
during his life, and Sir Thomas More's 
playfulness at the scaffold, are of the 
same strain. In Beaumont and 

16 



! Fletcher's ''Sea Voyage/' Juletta tells Sport 
the stout captain and his company, 

"Jul. Why, slaves, 'tis in our power to 
hang ye. 
Master. Very likely; 

*Tis in our powers, then, to be hanged, and 
scorn ye," 

These replies are sound and whole. 
Sport is the bloom and glow of a 
perfect health. The great will not 
condescend to take anything seriously ; 
all must be as gay as the song of a 
canary, though it were the building of 
cities, or the eradication of old and 
foolish churches and nations, which 
' have cumbered the earth long thousands 
I of years. Simple hearts put all the 
[history and customs of this world 
behind them, and play their own play 
in innocent defiance of the Blue-Laws 
\ of the world ; and such would appear, 
could we see the human race assembled 
i in vision, like little children frolicking 
t together; though, to the eyes of man- 

17 



Hero 



The kind at large, they wear a stately and 
solemn garb of works and influences. 
The interest these fine stories have 
for us, the power of a romance over 
the boy who grasps the forbidden book 
under his bench at school, our delight 
in the hero, is the main fact to our 
purpose. All these great and tran- 
scendent properties are ours. If we 
dilate in beholding the Greek energy, 
the Roman pride, it is that we are 
already domesticating the same 
sentiment. Let us find room for 

this great guest in our small houses. 
The first step of worthiness will be 
to disabuse us of our superstitious 
associations with places and times, 
with number and size. Why should 
these words, Athenian, Roman, Asia, 
and England, so tingle in the ear ? Let 
us feel that where the heart is, there 
the muses, there the gods sojourn, 
and not in any geography of fame. 
Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and 

18 



iS. 



Boston Bay you think paltry places, oiympus 
and the ear loves names of foreign and 
classic topography. But here we 

are; — that is a great fact, and, if we 
will tarry a little, we may come to 
learn that here is best See to it, only 
that thyself is here; — and art and 
nature, hope and dread, friends, angels, 
and the Supreme Being shall not be 
absent from the chamber where thou 
sittest. Epaminondas, brave and 

affectionate, does not seem to us to 
need Olympus to die upon, nor the 
Syrian sunshine. He lies very well 
where he is. The Jerseys were hand- 
' some ground enough for Washington 
to tread, and London streets for the 
feet of Milton. A great man illustrates 
his place, makes his climate genial in 
the imagination of men, and its air the 
beloved element of all delicate spirits, 
that country is the fairest which is 
inhabited by the noblest minds. The 
pictures which fill the imagination in 

19 






The reading the actions of Pericles, 
Actual Xenophon, Columbus, Bayard, Sidney, 
Hampden, teach us how needlessly 
mean our life is ; that we, by the depth 
of our living, should deck it with more 
than regal or national splendor, and act 
on principles that should interest man 
and nature in the length of our days. 
We have seen or heard of many 
extraordinary young men who never 
ripened, or whose performance in 
actual life was not extraordinary. 
When we see their air and mien, 
when we hear them speak of society, 
of books, of religion, we admire their 
superiority, they seem to throw con- 
tempt on the whole state of the world; 
theirs is the tone of a youthful giant, 
who is sent to work revolutions. But 
they enter an active profession, andlj 
the forming Colossus shrinks to the 
common size of man. The magic they 
used was the ideal tendencies, which 
always make the Actual ridiculous; 



20 



but the tough world had its revenge Better 
the moment they put their horses of Valor 
the sun to plough in its furrow. They 
found no example and no companion, 
and their heart fainted. What then ? 
The lesson they gave in their first 
aspirations is yet true; and a better 
valor and a purer truth shall one day 
execute their will, and put the world 
to shame. Or why should a woman 
liken herself to any historical woman, 
and think, because Sappho, or Sevigne, 
or De Stael, or the cloistered souls who 
have had genius and cultivation, do 
not satisfy the imagination and the 
, serene Themis, none can, — certainly 
not she? Why not? She has a new 
and unattempted problem to solve, 
perchance that of the happiest nature 
that ever bloomed. Let the maiden 
with erect soul walk serenely on her 
way, accept the hint of each new 
experience, try, in turn, all the gifts 
God offers her, that she may learn 

21 



Genuine 
Heroism 



the power and the charm that, like a 
new dawn radiating out of the deep of 
space, her new-born being is. The 
fair girl, who repels interference by a 
decided and proud choice of influences, 
so careless of pleasing, so wilful and 
lofty, inspires every beholder with 
somewhat of her own nobleness. The 
silent heart encourages her ; O friend, 
never strike sail to a fear. Come into 
port greatly, or sail with God the seas. 
Not in vain you live, for every passing 
eye is cheered and refined by the 
vision. 

The characteristic of a genuine 
heroism is its persistency. All men 
have wandering impulses, fits and 
starts of generosity. But when you 
have resolved to be gieat, abide by 
yourself, and do not weakly try to 
reconcile yourself with the world. The 
heroic cannot be the common, nor the 
common the heroic. Yet we have 
the weakness to expect the sympathy 

22 






>of people in those actions whose excel- Monotony 
lence is that they outrun sympathy, 
1 and appeal to a tardy justice. If you 
would serve your brother, because it is 
fit for you to serve him, do not take 
back your words when you find that 
(prudent people do not commend you. 

Be true to your own act, and con- 
jgratulate yourself if you have done 
something strange and extravagant, 
c and broken the monotony of a decorous 
i age. It was a high counsel that I once 
I heard given to a young person, * 'Always 
^do what you are afraid to do." A 
i simple manly character need never 
timake an apology, but should regard 
Hts past action with the calmness of 
IPhocion, when he admitted that the 
levent of the battle was happy, yet did 
mot regret his dissuasion from the 
battle. 

There is no weakness or exposure 
for which we cannot find consolation 
in the thought, — this is a part of my 



23 



Greatness constitutioii, part of my relation and 
office to my fellow -creature. Has 
nature covenanted with me that I 
should never appear to disadvantage, 
never make a ridiculous figure? Let 
us be generous of our dignity, as well 
as of our money. Greatness once 
and forever has done with opinion. 
We tell our charities, not because we 
wish to be praised for them, not because 
we think they have great merit, but for 
our j ustification. It is a capital blunder ; 
as you discover when another man 
recites his charities. 

To speak the truth even with some 
austerity, to live with some rigor of 
temperance or some' extremes of ' 
generosity, seems to be an asceticism , 
which common good nature would ' ! 
appoint to those who are at ease and 
in plenty, in sign that they feel a 
brotherhood with the great multitude 
of suffering men. And not only 

need we breathe and exercise the soul 

24 



mes 



by assuming the penalties of abstinence, t i 
of debt, of solitude, of unpopularity, of Terror 
but it behooves the wise man to look 
with a bold eye into those rarer dangers 
which sometimes invade men, and to 
familiarize himself with disgusting 
forms of disease, with sounds of exe- 
cration, and the vision of violent death. 
Times of heroism are generally times 
of terror ; but the day never shines in 
which this element may not work. 
The circumstances of man, we say, are 
historically somewhat better in this 
country, and at this hour, than perhaps 
ever before. More freedom exists for 
culture. It will not now run against 
an axe at the first step out of the beaten 
track of opinion. But whoso is 

heroic will always find crises to try his 
edge. Human virtue demands her 
champions and martyrs, and the trial 
of persecution always proceeds. It is 
but the other day that the brave 
Lovejoy gave his breast to the bullets 

25 



Peace of a mob for the rights of free speech 
and opinion, and died when it was 
better not to live. 

I see not any road of perfect peace 
which a man can walk, but to take 
counsel of his own bosom. Let him 
quit too much association ; let him go 
home much, and stablish himself in 
those courses he approves. The unre- 
mitting retention of simple and high 
sentiments in obscure duties is harden- 
ing the character to that temper which 
will work with honor, if need be, in 
the tumult or on the scaffold. Whatever 
outrages have happened to men may 
befall a man again ; and very easily in 
a republic, if there appear any signs of 
a decay of religion. Coarse slander, 
fire, tar and feathers, and the gibbet, 
the youth may freely bring home to his 
mind, and with what sweetness of 
temper he can, and inquire how fast 
he can fix his sense of duty, braving 
such penalties, whenever it may please 

26 



the next newspaper, and a suflficient Good 
number of his neighbors, to pronounce ^^^ Brave 
his opinions incendiary. 

It may calm the apprehension of 
calamity in the most susceptible heart, 
to see how quick a bound nature has 
set to the utmost infliction of malice. 
We rapidly approach a brink over 
which no enemy can follow us. 

" Let them rave : 
Thou art quiet in thy grave." 

In the gloom of our ignorance of what 
shall be in the hour when we are deaf 
to the higher voices, who does not 
envy them who have seen safely to an 
end their manful endeavor ? Who that 
sees the meanness of our politics, but 
inly congratulates Washington that he 
is long already wrapped in his shroud, 
and forever safe; that he was laid 
sweet in his grave, the hope of humanity 
not yet subjugated in him? Who does 
not sometimes envy the good and 
brave, who are no more to suffer from 

27 



^^^ the tumults of the natural world, and 
" await with curious complacency the 
speedy term of his own conversation 
with finite nature? And yet the love 
that will be annihilated sooner than 
treacherous, has already made death 
impossible, and affirms itself no mortal, 
but a native of the deeps of absolute 
and inextinguishable being. 



M 



28 



A 






- xt 



This edition of Emerson's Heroism 
has been printed for Morgan 
Shepard Co. by Kenneth Ives 
(Inc.). Decorations de- 
signed by Fred. W. 
Goudy, October 
MCMVI 



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